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Back The Bone Factory
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. The Bad Man
  3. Epigraph
  4. PROLOGUEBLOOD
  5. PART ONE
  6. CHAPTER TWO
  7. CHAPTER THREE
  8. CHAPTER FOUR
  9. CHAPTER FIVE
  10. CHAPTER SIX
  11. CHAPTER SEVEN
  12. CHAPTER EIGHT
  13. CHAPTER NINE
  14. CHAPTER TEN
  15. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  22. PART TWO
  23. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. PART THREE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  44. CHAPTER FORTY
  45. EPILOGUE
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. High Praise for Nate Kenyon’s
  48. Other Leisure Books by Nate Kenyon:

He crouched and ran along the wall until he reached its edge. Blood pulsing impossibly loud in his ears, he stuck his head around the corner. He found himself looking at the door of the building, shut tight against the cold. Cutting off his fear as best he could, he tried the handle. It swung open with a dull scraping sound.

It was the smell that hit him first—an overpowering, rotten stench that clogged the nostrils and made him gag, staggering backward until he could get his parka zipped up to cover his face. Even then it was there, the unmistakable smell of death.

Right then, he almost turned and ran. But the thought of that little girl, maybe still alive and scared at least as bad as he was, made him take a step into the darkness.

The blackness surrounded him, swallowed him and welcomed him with the utter equality of the blind. He blinked stupidly, eyes adjusting to the deep black shadows around him, and stood frozen with his gun held out as things began to take shape. A dim patch of light from the window shone onto the floor, and he shuffled towards it, closer to the wall until his hands met with something hard.

Jesus the flashlight I forgot the fucking flashlight in my pocket.

How could he be so stupid? Holding the gun in his left hand, he pulled the flashlight out of his jacket and aimed it at the wall, switching it on.

The thing he had touched was an animal, or at least it might have been at one time. It looked to be the size of a raccoon, and it was covered in dried blood and frozen stiff.

There was no head.

Joe stumbled backward, and the beam of the flashlight lit up the entire wall. It was covered with the carcasses of animals and bare bones, a grotesque and sadistic trophy case. Blood ran in drips and blotches down the wood, staining it a dull, coppery brown.

He turned and saw the girl. She had been thrown into a corner, her body broken and battered and her clothes ripped to shreds. Her head was twisted at an impossible angle and her dead eyes stared at him vacantly.

The doorknob was slick in his gloved hand, old and slippery metal, and then the door opened and he stumbled into the cold. The smell would not leave him, it followed him as he struggled across the snow, and then he saw his tracks and there were another pair, oh Christ, another pair, and he spun around wildly, losing his balance and dropping his gun.

Joe Thibideau never had a chance to get up. A shadow fell across his path, followed by a searing pain in his shoulder, moonlight flashing on a silver blade that rose up and plunged down again and again, speckling the pure white snow with his blood.

PART ONE

PAST TRANSGRESSIONS

CHAPTER ONE